The Niagara News is the community newspaper of Niagara College located in Welland and Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. It is created and produced by the students of the Niagara College Journalism program.

Niagara College and Habitat for Humanity building homes brick by brick

The Construction Techniques program has built its 11th home with its partner, Habitat for Humanity Niagara. The home is being constructed by 72 students in the program.

“We started this relationship in 2006,” says Alastair Davis, Habitat Niagara chief executive officer. “It’s a great way for students to get a chance to build a house in their own living classroom [and] for Habitat to have a very organized and a well supervised workforce.”

Davis also explained that the family purchasing the home “receives an interest-free mortgage from Habitat” as their payments are geared towards their income making the home affordable.

Many people who went to see the home were able to write messages on any piece of wood, along the lines of ‘Best Wishes’ in English or Spanish. It was an emotional, but exciting moment for the Palma family, who will be able to live in the home once it is completed.

Claudia and José Palma are from El Salvador and have been living in Canada for four years. They have brought along their son and Claudia’s mother Antonia. They have had two more children since moving here.

“We had a bad situation down there [in El Salvador]. We had problems with gang members and they came after us,” José says. He and Claudia were volunteers in their community at a children’s place. When the gang members found out, they had to leave, and Canada was their destination.

Claudia expressed how happy she was that her family would be able to live in the home.

“This means everything. Everything is a dream come true.” Claudia smiles at her husband. “We are very excited, we are so grateful with Habitat, with Niagara College, to all the students. We are very grateful.”

President of Niagara College Dan Patterson was also in attendance for Habitat Niagara’s wood signing ceremony.

“We’re just delighted to be able to celebrate this very special partnership between Habitat for Humanity and Niagara College. It’s been 11 years that we’ve worked with Habitat for Humanity and we’ve developed a tremendous working relationship that’s led to a very innovative program here today that we’re celebrating,” Patterson says.

Colin Robinson, the program co-ordinator for Construction Techniques, is in project lead.

“This year, we’ve taken a different spin on things and we’ve actually gone to [do] a modular home construction,” Robinson says. He explains that it helps them “find ways to improve the efficiency of the build” and “to eliminate some of the challenges of getting students to the job site.” As for the construction of the home, Robinson says that they have just completed the framing stage of construction and will move on to the interior and exterior finishes.

“We’re going to take the house as far as we can, recognizing that we still have to take it apart into modules to ship it,” Robinson explains. “We’ll get drywall done when we can, we’ll get any of the finishes done prior to shipping.”

Construction started in the last week of October. Completion will be in the last week of March, when they will ship it to the Martin Street job site in Welland finalizing construction there, with the help of Habitat Niagara volunteers.